Last
Monday was Columbus Day, and here we see a global controversy in miniature.
Some people look at Europe’s “universal” civilization as a bad thing.
Perhaps they would have preferred to see the spread of Chinese civilization,
or Islamic civilization. Would the Incas or the Aztecs have given us democracy
and the free market, with the attending liberty and prosperity? Not likely. It
may be said, despite the usual atrocities, that Western Civilization has been
a good thing. Without Columbus and the discovery of the New World, the United
States wouldn’t have come into existence. In that event, who would have
pulled Europe and Asia out of the rubble of world war? The reader cannot
imagine how many outraged letters I receive every week from readers who remind
me that America’s legacy consists mainly of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Have we
forgotten the history of the last twenty-five centuries? Have we forgotten the
cruelty of the Persian emperors, the destruction of Carthage by Rome and the
barbarian invasions that inundated Rome? Have we forgotten the whole murderous
story with its Viking raiders, Mongol horsemen and cannibals?

It is
best to put everything into perspective. The era dominated by U.S. power and
the American dollar hasn’t been the worst period of history. In fact, it has
been one of the best. American power has stabilized the world so that a global
system of trade has flourished. And it is that self-same system that supports
over six billion human lives. Admittedly, this global system is not perfect.
It is not utopia. But it is a far cry from the famine, pestilence and penury
of “normal history” – of antiquity and the Dark Ages. Let us contemplate
what might have been if the Nazis and Japanese had won the Second World War
– or if Communism had triumphed during the Cold War. Does anyone really
suppose the world would be better off?

Men
seldom appreciate what they have. In the midst of peace and plenty they curse
the very mechanism that sustains them. They set aside the folkways that
brought prosperity. They neglect the study of those subjects that foster
liberty. Inevitably, all their vain enterprises become imbued with malice,
spite and envy. They malign the rich and powerful. They curse the philosophers
and embrace the false prophets and revolutionary pranksters of history.
“America is evil,” they say. “American deserves to be
destroyed.”

Here
lies the argument of the coming war. It is an argument that will be settled by
the mass use of biological and nuclear weapons. For you cannot destroy a power
as great as America, or eradicate its memory, without resorting to ultimate
weapons. The reason that the Russians, Chinese, Iranians and others put such
stock in nuclear weapons is obvious. These are the only weapons that promise
to destroy the Americans. Therefore, history necessarily follows a logical
path.

The era
dominated by American power and the American dollar isn’t going to last. The
knives are out and the victim cannot escape. In the long run, something
catches you by the heels. We all die. And that goes for nations as well as
individuals. The student of history may predict what follows, as a matter of
historical logic. The planet will descend into war and dictatorship. Even here
in North America we have no assurance that freedom will be prevail. In the
last twenty-five centuries of recorded history we find brief periods of
republican-type government and much longer periods of monarchy and rule by
warlords. Freedom is not the usual state of mankind. As Jean Jacques Rousseau
wrote more than two centuries ago: “Man is born free; and everywhere he is
in chains.”

Our
appreciation of today’s situation ought to be predicated on an understanding
of the extent to which oppression has been the normal state of mankind. Let us
therefore appreciate what America has wrought, admitting that bad outcomes
have occurred. A balanced view, as opposed to an ideological view, considers
the realistic alternatives. It should also be remembered that the problem of
maintaining liberty and prosperity is predicated – first and foremost – on
the problem of national survival. The ugly business of surviving against
enemies and rivals isn’t something you can afford to set aside. Americans
today are too quick to dismiss the threat of mass destruction that faces them.
They decry open borders yet demand the cheap goods those open borders
guarantee. It is not enough to survive. We want to live well, and we cling to
our “American dream.”

Prosperity
fosters permissive and lax attitudes. Prosperity also leads us to forget that
liberty requires an underlying “order.” As the situation in Iraq
demonstrates, freedom may signify anarchy and civil war. The Americans were
determined to give freedom to Iraq, lacking the brutality necessary for the
establishment of order. If the Iraqi dictator murdered thirty thousand
innocents a year, the liberation of Iraq has led to thirty thousand deaths a
month. Order is more fundamental than liberty. Without order at the
foundation, there can be no liberty worth having. This may seem a paradox to
the latter-day liberal, yet it is entirely understandable to the conservative
who has read Edmund Burke’s Reflections
on the Revolution in France.

The
simple forms of the state – monarchy, aristocracy and democracy – tend to
degenerate into tyranny, oligarchy and mob rule. According to ancient
observers this could be expected within two or three generations of the
state’s founding. By mixing elements of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy
into a single constitution, each element checks the others thereby
forestalling a descent into tyranny and civil war.

There is
a catch, of course. Certain preconditions are necessary for republican
government to flourish. Niccolo Machiavelli listed six conditions, and these
may be related loosely as follows: (1) That there is respect for tradition;
(2) that the town dominate the country; (3) that popular power is
institutionalized; (4) that a large middle class exists; (5) that civic spirit
has not decayed; and (6) that there is knowledge of these things. If these
conditions are not present, noted Machiavelli, men should not attempt
republican government because such an attempt will ruin them.

In the
case of Iraq, the country’s traditions included Saddam’s secret police,
mass political homicide, censorship, arbitrary arrest and torture. Popular
power was not institutionalized and a large middle class did not exist. It is
therefore easy to understand why America’s foreign policy in the Middle East
has failed. The necessary preconditions for success were missing, as they are
missing in many places around the globe. If people want to understand why
democracy never triumphed in Russia, why it fails to emerge in China, one
merely has to consider Machiavelli’s six conditions.

The American failure abroad shouldn’t surprise us. Over the last thirty
years Americans have lost the knowledge that attends the preservation of vital
traditions (i.e., order) and civic spirit. We are therefore unable to
recognize the proper course abroad. The time will soon come, as well, when we
lose our way at home.